


Cheek to Cheek

by fizzygingr



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Sketches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fizzygingr/pseuds/fizzygingr
Summary: They'll always return to dancing. Solid hands, solid feet; it keeps them grounded out among the stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to cheesethesecond for beta-reading!

“You never told me you could dance,” said Hera, looking up from the pot she was scrubbing out. Kanan, stacking plates up on the top shelf, looked down at his feet and realized that he’d shuffled his whole way over to the cabinet. Oh. When did he start letting his guard down like that? And why, a small part of him wondered, did he not care that he was pivoting to face Hera and extending a hand in invitation?

“I’m full of surprises,” he heard himself say. And she did look slightly surprised when she took his hand, but not at all unhappy. Hera’s own hand, which she’d bared for washing dishes, felt warm and slippery when he wrapped his fingers around it. She playfully flung her other hand over his shoulder, splashing water and foam on his face.

For just a moment they moved awkwardly, starting off in opposite directions and stepping on each other’s toes. But Kanan began to get a sense of how she moved her feet and her body (rapid but smooth, with all the agility one would expect from a pilot). He let her lead him across the floor, feeling her hand move instinctively in the direction she wanted to go before the rest of her body followed.

Kanan realized as they dipped and swayed that he hadn’t lived with anybody in a long time. Oh, he’d crashed on plenty of couches (and chairs, and floors, and at least two cargo compartments), and he’d shared space with all sorts of folk. But he’d never gotten into the same rhythms - eating meals together, working together, going to bed and waking up at the same times. He’d never stayed with anybody long enough to know how to make a pot of caf exactly the way they liked it (three scoops, coarsely ground, and a little to top it off). And if he was being honest with himself, he’d never cared about anyone enough to figure it out.

But with Hera, it felt right to cook dinner for two night after night, learning which vegetables were her favorites (daro root when they could find it) and how much heat she could tolerate (more than he could). And when they did dishes together after, always running the water scalding hot and listening to whatever local radio station Chopper could pick up, Kanan felt comfortable. More comfortable than he’d felt since before he’d been Kanan Jarrus.

He noticed that her cheek was brushing against his ever so slightly, moving back and then forward with the bass line. He turned his head slowly until his lips were hovering right over hers. For a second he could feel her breath on his face - and then she pulled back. She stood firm on the floor, but kept her hands right where they had been.

“I’m sorry,” Kanan said, loosening his hold on her right hand.

She held onto it tighter. “No, don’t be,” she said. “It’s not…” she shook her head. “The timing’s not right, that’s all.”

He nodded, waiting for her to keep speaking, or to take her left hand off his shoulder.

“But we can dance,” Hera said. It was less of a concession and more of a declaration. “We can dance,” she said, and her mouth was determined and her eyes were glad and her arms were already beginning to pull him to the left. Kanan happily moved along with her.

**

“How’d it go?” Hera asked as Kanan walked into her room on the med deck, fresh from another mission. She noticed that his shirt was torn, and there was blood - not his own - still on his face. “I hear you gave the dockmaster a run for his money.”

Hera always read the official report while her crew was on their way back, but she still liked to hear it coming from Kanan’s mouth; his report always had more personality, and more detail. And as long as she was stuck on this med deck, recovering all too slowly from what had happened at Concord Dawn, hearing Kanan’s report was as close as she could come to being there.

“And how have you been?” he asked, settling down into the seat next to her hoverchair.

“Took this chair out for a spin.” She slapped the armrest. “Made it to a few meetings.”

“That’s great, Hera!”

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging her good shoulder and looking at the ground.

“That’s...not great?” Kanan ventured. “What’s up?”

She sighed. “C-47 and I tried walking again today.”

“And?”

“I fell on my face.”

Kanan’s brow furrowed with concern. “You have to be careful, Hera. Don’t push yourself.”

Don’t push yourself. “You know I hate it when you say that, right?”

“Hey, I only meant-”

“You put your life on the line today, because you have something worth taking risks for. Well so do I, and I’ll risk falling on my face if I damn well please.”

“You’re right,” Kanan said, “You have to take risks. But you also have to be patient if your body doesn’t heal as fast as you want it to.”

“I know.” She sighed, taking Kanan’s hand and squeezing it hard. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“You’ll be back in action soon,” he said, gently rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand.

She leaned into him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ll be flying, running, shooting. Watching all of our backs.” He laced his fingers into hers. “You’ll even be dancing.”

She nodded, a smile beginning to form on the corners of her lips. “I’ll just have to learn to stand first.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Kanan stood up. Pressing a button on her hoverchair, he lifted it up so her eyes were level with his. With his other hand, he switched on music, some old recording she’d been listening to in bed to pass the time. Then he laid his hands on her shoulders and began to sway gently back and forth.

Hera rolled her eyes, but placed her hands on his waist all the same. She could feel his body turning side to side beneath them, and she subtly--carefully--moved her arms along with it. Her legs were dangling from the hoverchair, clumsily kicking at his shins, and she was far too tired to keep any sort of beat, but it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes and let the music and Kanan’s hands carry her back and forth.

**

“How did I know I’d find you here?”

Kanan sat cross-legged in the empty spot behind the Ghost, deep in meditation. His shoulders, which had been rising and falling slowly with his breath, flinched at Hera’s voice.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Make a joke of it. I’m doing the one thing I still can do.”

“Are you sure that’s all you can do?” she asked, taking a step closer.

“What do you mean?”

“Just be with us, love. It would do you good.”

It would do us all good, she thought. But it wasn’t the time to tell him that dinners were quiet, that Ezra was angrier than ever, that she was lonely and ached for a hand to hold.

She reached for his hand, laying her thumb inside his open palm, then lifted it slightly, inviting him to stand, to dance.

He let it linger there for only a moment before pulling away.

**

Kanan heard chatter and glasses clinking in this little bar on Okkaro, and he smelled smoke and spilled beer, but what kept him grounded more than anything was the feel of Hera’s shoulder under his arm. They sat like that a lot lately, something for which Kanan was grateful; it was soothing to feel her shoulders rise and fall, and to feel her, solidly, there. 

He felt her back straighten in surprised when a new song started.

“Is that the Flying Zailah?”

“The Flying What?”

“It’s an Okkarese folk dance,” Hera explained. “I learned it from an old woman when I was fifteen. She said it was popular on her world, despite the Empire’s best efforts to squash any sort of cultural expression there. I guess it’s still going strong.”

She slid his arm off of her and stood up. “Want me to teach you?”

“Hera, I can’t-”

“You can’t see. Doesn’t mean you can’t dance.”

He stood up tentatively. “Okay, how does it start?”

“You stomp your right foot twice...” 

He heard her foot come down hard on the floor, and mimicked her. 

“Like that, yeah, but get your knee higher. Then your left foot…”

This time they both stomped, and their feet hit the floor in unison. “Perfect,” she said. “So it’s right-foot-left-foot.” She took both of his hands and lifted them to shoulder height. “Turn-two-three-four.” she let go of one hand, turned counterclockwise so they were back to back, then let go of the other and came back around to face him. “Left-foot-right-foot…” they stomped again in unison. “Now you turn just like I did.” He copied her, remembering the placement of her fingers and the slight tug of her arm.

“Now here’s the fun part,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. “Can I touch your legs?”

He nodded, and let her guide him in an intricate series of kicks and leaps. When she moved his leg up-and-back, heel-and-toe, the jumble of kicks and thumps and breezes he sensed in the bar started to come together. He could picture it, if he wanted to, but he found that he didn’t. It was better to enjoy it with the rest of his senses.

“Is that the flying Zailah?” Ezra said, coming up behind them.

“You know it?” Hera asked. She continued dancing as she spoke.

“I used to dance it with my mom. Don’t know where she learned it. But she said when we danced it, we were shouting out everything the Empire wanted kept quiet.” He laughed softly. “I always liked that.”

“I wish I could have met her, Ezra,” said Hera gently.

“Yeah,” he replied, “So do I.”

“Do you still remember it?” asked Kanan.

“I don’t think I could forget.”

Kanan took Hera’s hand and Ezra’s hand and pulled them towards each other. “Why don’t you two dance it, then?”

Ezra objected - “Kanan, I don’t want to stop you-”

“No,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to dance...” 

He listened to the stomping of boots on the ground - right-right-left-left - the swishing of fabrics, the laughter of the dancers and the joy radiating off of them, and he wanted nothing more than to sense the people he loved sharing in that. He placed their hands together.

“I want to watch.”


End file.
